The number of reported Islamophobic attacks since the Woolwich murder has continued to rise dramatically amid warnings from Muslim community leaders that the backlash which has seen attempted firebombings of mosques is being fuelled by far right groups.

As participants in an English Defence League (EDL) march in Whitehall were recorded giving Nazi-style salutes, Faith Matters, which monitors anti-Muslim hatred, said the number of incidents in the past six days had risen to 193, including ten assaults on mosques. The figure compares to a total of 642 incidents in the previous 12 months – meaning the last week has seen a 15-fold increase on last year’s average of 12 attacks per week.

The spike came as Scotland Yard said it had made a tenth arrest in the investigation into the murder of soldier Lee Rigby on Wednesday. A 50-year-old man was detained on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. Earlier, three men arrested on Saturday were released on police bail.

There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department’s snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News’s James Rosen.

The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law.

The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to posses it has committed a crime. That might cover Rosen’s source.

Section 793(g) is a conspiracy count that says that anyone who conspires to help the source do that has committed the same crime. That would be the reporter.

Residents of Israel’s northernmost town of Metula were roused before dawn Monday, May 27 by an exploding rocket fired from the Lebanese town of Marjayoun about 10 kilometers north of the border. It landed on open ground, causing no casualties or damage. debkafile’s military sources report: Just 48 hours after Hassan Nasrallah’s war speech, Hizballah, Iran’s proxy, had joined the war of attrition President Assad has directed against Israel from the Golan.

The IDF has so far made no mention of the widely reported rocket attack although Lebanese media said an Israeli drone was hovering over the Marjayoun area.

Metula was attacked the day after three Grad missiles were fired from a point east of Mt Lebanon to explode in the Hizballah-controlled Dahiya district of Beirut, injuring five people and causing some damage.

It was fired by local Sunni elements sympathetic to the Syrian rebels. The Shiite Hizballah decided to retaliate against northern Israel – for a reason. It made clear that the position laid out by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon that “Israel is not involved in the Syrian war” is not reciprocated either by Syrian President Bashar Assad or Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Obama’s vision for winding down the war on terrorism, using talk show appearances to accuse him of misunderstanding the threat in a way that will embolden unfriendly nations.

“We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine.”

In his first major foreign policy address of his second term, Mr. Obama said last week that it was time for the United States to narrow the scope of its long battle against terrorists and begin a transition away from a war footing.

He's no stranger to trouble.
And it seems that Chris Brown has got himself into a needless spot of bother yet again.
According to TMZ, Brown is being investigated by the LAPD after committing a 'hit-and-run.'

It's not as cut and dry as that suggests, however.
The 24-year-old rear-ended another driver earlier this week but allegedly refused to give her his driver's licence and it's being claimed that passed over incorrect insurance.

A battery of measures to prevent the radicalisation of British Muslims has been outlined by the home secretary, Theresa May, including tougher pre-emptive censorship of internet sites, a lower threshold for banning extremist groups and renewed pressure on universities and mosques to reject "hate preachers".

May also signalled on Sunday that she was prepared to do battle with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, over his veto of the communications data bill – the so-called snooper's charter.

After four days in which ministers have been praised in some quarters for avoiding a knee-jerk response to the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby outside his Woolwich barracks in south London, Whitehall swung into action.

Both the RAF Bomber Command War Memorial and the Animals in War Memorial less than a mile down the road were discovered to be daubed with graffiti early this morning.

The words written on the two memorials have now been covered up, but the BBC has published a picture which shows "Islam" written on the Animals in War Memorial, which honours animals that have served and died for the British military forces.

Sweden's worst riots in years might benefit a far-right party in elections next year if scenes of immigrants burning cars and smashing up buildings cause voters to rethink their traditional welcome to foreigners.

Even before the week of riots in the poorer neighborhoods of Stockholm, immigration had become a hot political issue, as the number of asylum seekers reached record levels.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party shot to third place in polls earlier this year and the riots could help them secure more political clout at 2014 elections.

Adding to poor patients' incomes works to decrease the health effects of poverty, Canadian doctors are finding.

The Canadian Medical Association is asking people across the country how poverty affects their health as part of its national dialogue tour. The group said that social and economic factors determine 50 per cent of health outcomes.

At his inner city family practice at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, Dr. Gary Bloch puts income information at the top of the medical history he puts on his charts.

"Treating people at low income with a higher income will have at least as big an impact on their health as any other drugs that I could prescribe them," Bloch said.

To that end, Bloch asks all patients what their income is and where they get it, along with the standard questions about past medical history, surgeries and medications.

"I do see poverty as a disease," Bloch said.

In his practice, prescribing income could mean assessing whether a patient's illnesses might qualify for provincial or federal disability supports and employment insurance. He helps fill in applications and connects patients with programs such as basic financial planning.

Germany's economy ministry has officially told the European Commission it does not back the imposition of punitive import duties on solar panels from China, a government source told Reuters on Monday.

The Commission, the EU's executive arm, accuses China of pricing its solar panels too cheaply and "dumping" them in Europe to corner the market and plans to impose duties, but Germany has distanced itself from the initiative.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during talks in Berlin on Sunday that Germany, China's biggest trade partner in Europe, would do everything it could to prevent the trade dispute escalating.

For a pathogen with such a short history, the mysterious new virus killing people in the Middle East and Europe has already had an amazing array of names.

It first surfaced last year as "human betacoronavirus 2c EMC", but the suffixes "2c England-Qatar, "2C Jordan-N3", "England 1" have also appeared and many scientists have resorted to "novel coronavirus" - new crown-shaped virus - instead.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) says the virus and the severe infections and deaths it has caused are "alarming" and need to be tracked, none of its names is especially helpful.

"A virus is only 'novel' until the next one comes around," Raoul de Groot, head of the Coronavirus Study Group (CSG), said of the catchiest of the titles it has acquired so far.

Heavy fighting raged on Monday around the strategic border town of Qusair and the capital Damascus, amid renewed reports of chemical weapons attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Opposition activists said Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were advancing in areas around Qusair, pressing a sustained assault on a town long used by rebels as a way station for arms and other supplies from Lebanon.

For Assad, Qusair is a crucial link between Damascus and loyalist strongholds on the Mediterranean coast. Recapturing the town, in central Homs province, could also sever connections between rebel-held areas in the north and south of Syria.

Britain’s security services sought to recruit the Woolwich murder suspect Michael Adebolajo while he was being held by the Kenyan authorities on suspicion of attempting to join Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, The Independent has learnt.

Friends and family of Adebolajo have claimed that he was tortured and even sexually assaulted by Kenyan police following his arrest in November 2010 before then being returned to Britain where he was allegedly "pestered" by MI5 agents to become an informant. The Independent understands that British agents instead made contact with the 28-year-old while he was still in Kenya and pressured him to work for the Security Service in Britain.

Adebolajo, who was held in custody for several days in the port city of Mombasa and complained of mistreatment, was eventually released without charge by the Kenyan authorities.

Islamophobia has surged in Britain since the religiously motivated knifing death of a British soldier last week, and late Sunday, while inciting messages circulated on social media, flames erupted at a mosque, police said.

Officers arrested two men in the town of Grimsby on England's east coast on suspicion of arson, according to Humberside county police. No one was injured in the blaze.

The anti-Muslim English Defence League demonstrated in the town's center the morning before the fire. It will launch another march Monday near the office of Prime Minister David Cameron.

At High Bridge Arms on Mission Street, the only gun store in San Francisco, a box of .9mm ammo has a shelf life of about five minutes.

“It used to take us a month to sell 5,000 rounds,” general manager Steve Alcairo said of the most popular caliber. “Now, we go through that in a week — when we can get them.”

Driven by intense consumer demand — which, in turn, has been driven by fear of a legislative crackdown in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy — the Bay Area and the country are in the midst of an unprecedented ammunition shortage.

STOCKHOLM — Eva Bromster, an elementary school principal, was jolted awake by a telephone call late Thursday night. “Your school is burning,” her boss, the director of the local education department, told her.

Ms. Bromster rushed to the school, in the mostly immigrant district of Tensta, north of Stockholm, and found one room gutted by fire and another filled with ankle-deep water after firefighters had doused the flames. It was the second fire at the school in three days.

In Stockholm and other towns and cities last week, bands made up mostly of young immigrants set buildings and cars ablaze in a spasm of destructive rage rarely seen in a country proud of its normally tranquil, law-abiding ways.

The disturbances, with echoes of urban eruptions in France in 2005 and Britain in 2011, have pushed Sweden to the center of a heated debate across Europe about immigration and the tensions it causes in a time of deep economic malaise.

A rocket was fired from south Lebanon towards Israel on Sunday, Lebanese security sources said, and residents of a northern Israeli town reported hearing a blast.

"An explosion was heard. Soldiers are searching the area. The cause is still being investigated," an Israeli military spokeswoman said. A second Israeli military source said the explosion was probably caused by a mortar.

The incident came amid heightened tensions in the region over Syria's civil war. Damascus has said it will respond to Israeli air strikes earlier this month against suspected Iranian missiles in Syria destined for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Secretary of State John Kerry sketched out a plan on Sunday to spur Palestinian growth with up to $4 billion in private investment, but did not say where the money would come from.

Kerry drew a picture of prosperity in the West Bank that could spread to Israel and Jordan, while acknowledging it would not fully materialize without movement toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Despite deep skepticism in the region, Kerry is trying to revive negotiations after a gap of more than two years and has said both sides must decide soon whether they are ready to make compromises for peace.

Japan's Nikkei index slid more than three percent on Monday, extending last week's severe volatility and causing investors to worry that a bout of profit-taking had turned into lasting doubt about the growth and riskiness of markets.

Last week's shakeout of equity, bond and currency markets was triggered by doubts over how much weakness in the yen Japanese policymakers would tolerate, concerns the U.S. Federal Reserve would reduce monetary stimulus soon, and weakness in Chinese manufacturing data.

But U.S. equities ended off their lows on Friday while U.S. 10-year Treasury yields steadied near 2 percent, suggesting to investors the dollar will resume its rally against the yen and other markets will be calmer.

The ski resort posted remarkable pictures on its Twitter page showing employees in a heavy winter coats and four-wheel drive trucks frolicking in massive snow drifts. Communities at higher elevations in Vermont, New Hampshire, Upstate New York and northwest Maine all reported snowfall on Sunday. Most of the snow was little more than a dusting of large wet flakes. Above 2,800 feet of elevation, though, the snow was more substantial.

The Memorial Day weekend is supposed to signal the start of summer but some Americans were waking up to snow this morning.

Snow showers were forecast for the higher elevations of Vermont, Upstate New York, New Hampshire and northwest Maine early today, and confused residents took to Twitter to bemoan the wintry weather.

By this afternoon, snowflakes should be confined to the higher summits of northern New England but the chilly weather will linger all day as cloud cover and rain keeps highs in the 40s and 50s from New England to northeastern New York.

The founder and president of a Connecticut military museum was shot and killed at his home by police after he pointed a handgun at officers, Connecticut state police said Sunday.

State police identified the man killed Friday in Ridgefield as 75-year-old John Valluzzo.

Valluzzo was armed when Ridgefield police arrived at his posh, 9,000 square foot home following a call about a possible domestic incident on Friday evening, state police said. He was shot after authorities said he refused to comply with orders to put the gun down and instead raised it on officers.

A New York EMT is accused of killing his estranged wife by strangling her then setting her home on fire with her in it.

The 2008 inferno in Narrowsburg that left Catherine Novak dead was originally written off as a tragic accident. But, last September, Paul Novak's former girlfriend told police that he had confessed to her that he had murdered the mother of his children.

Novak, 45, and a fellow EMT, Scott Sherwood, 40, who allegedly helped him follow through with his plot, are now charged with murder and their trial is expected to begin in July.

A 16-year-old Pennsylvania boy was arrested on Saturday after police say he fatally stabbed his girlfriend as the two were arguing on a hiking trail in a park in a suburb of Philadelphia. Tristan Brian Arthur Stahley has been charged with one count each of first-degree murder, third-degree murder, and criminal possession of a weapon after stabbing his girlfriend, 17-year-old Julianne Siller, to death. Siller was scheduled to graduate from high school in just three weeks.

There was a close call between a military helicopter and a regional airliner attempting to land at Reagan National Airport near Washington last week, federal officials said today.

At their closest point, the two aircraft were flying at the same altitude and were only 950 feet apart laterally, said Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident.

Republic Airlines flight 3281 had descended to 400 feet as it approached the airport when the helicopter, which had been flying lower and ahead of the plane, briefly rose to 400 feet as well, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

Home Secretary Theresa may condemned the BBC and other broadcasters for interviewing 'disgusting' extremist cleric Anjem Choudary (pictured) after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby (inset). The move is the most dramatic attempt to gag those who peddle extremist views since the Thatcher government's 1988 ban on IRA spokesmen being heard on TV, which led to the words of Gerry Adams being read out by an actor.

A Kenyan police official says the country's anti-terrorism police have killed a wanted terrorist and recovered a cache of weapons in the port city of Mombasa.

Police official Boniface Mwaniki said Sunday that Khalid Ahmed was trailed by police from the capital Nairobi to Mombasa where he was killed in a dawn exchange of fire at his mother's house. Mwaniki says the Somali national sneaked into Kenya from Somalia where he had undergone paramilitary training.

Mwaniki said police recovered a hand grenade, a pistol and ammunition inside the house. He said some police officers were wounded in the shootout with Ahmed.

China’s premier has waded into an intensifying trade dispute with Europe, warning that EU investigations into Chinese-made solar panels and telecommunications equipment would backfire by hurting European consumers.

“The cases over these two types of products will hurt Chinese industries, business and jobs and also damage the vital interests of European users and consumers,” Li Keqiang said en route to Berlin on Sunday during his first foreign trip since becoming premier. “We express firm opposition.”